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| Tristram Shandy (Wordsworth Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Laurence Sterne
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £1.99
Buy Used: £0.02
You Save: £1.97 (99%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 48296
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 474
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 1853262919
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781853262913
ASIN: 1853262919
Publication Date: March 1, 1996
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Also Available In:
| • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) | | • | Audio Cassette - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Penguin Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (World's Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Oxford World's Classics) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Hardcover - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (New Casebooks Series) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: An Authoritative Text, the Author on the Novel, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Riverside Editions) | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - Sterne Laurence : Tristram Shandy (Sc) (Signet Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman Pbs.) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy (Everyman Paperback) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - Notes on Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (Cliffs Notes) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library Classics) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - Tristam Shandy | | • | Paperback - Tristam Shandy: 16 (Letras Universales / Universal Writings) | | • | Audio CD - Tristram Shandy (Classic fiction) | | • | Audio CD - Tristram Shandy | | • | Audio Cassette - Tristram Shandy (Classic fiction) | | • | Paperback - Tristam Shandy | | • | Unknown Binding - Tristram Shandy | | • | Unknown Binding - Tristram Shandy (Armed Services edition) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy, (The Modern library of the world's best books) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (English Library) |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 The book's great, this edition isn't! May 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Giving Tristram Shandy a 1-star review makes me shudder, but I feel it's imperative that everyone knows this edition comes without -any- notes. If you're widely read and know a bit about the period this might not be a huge problem, but even then you're probably going to miss a lot with Sterne, who is a very allusive writer. I recommend getting another edition, most will come with notes.
 A wandering rambling classic April 1, 2008
This book was published in the mid eighteenth century but shows so much warm insight into humanity and the oddness of people's eccentricities that it is practically timeless. It celebrates and adores its characters with a gentle, loving wicked humour and observation and a glorious playful and rich (and florid) language which is modern enough to read without too much adjustment - there are no low moments or sad parts even though it covers many events which could have been seen as traumatic. It is bawdy without being crude or explicit. It is funny enough to keep you smiling throughout. It needs to be read again and again to get the most out of every word - especially because it rambles, chops and changes its narrative in a manner which the author admits is both appalling (and a deliberate play on the florid and rambling novels of the time) and which he comments on and talks to you about as he loses his way and finds it again. If I was only ever allowed one book to read for the rest of my life it would be this one - don't miss it! The Penguin Classic Audiobook read by Steven Pacey is a superb version of what must be in the top ten of books you'd never want to read out aloud - it makes the story jump out of the page and make sense.
One of the greatest of comic novels March 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dr Johnson famously said of this book, "Nothing odd will do long - Tristram Shandy did not last." Well, even the good doctor could err. The book has lasted, to the delight of generations of readers.
A postmodern tale April 3, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.
Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers like Calvino, Joyce and Danielewski did. The result is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a gloriously rambling, richly entertaining sort-of-novel.
"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." So begins Tristram, who starts his life story with his "begetting," and attempts to tell the story of his birth and life, as well as the descriptions of relatives -- his lovable uncle Toby, his eccentric dad, his patient mother (who's in labor for most of the book).
But as he tries to tell us about his life, Tristram keeps getting sidetracked by all the stories that surround him -- his uncle's romance with the Widow Wadman and the war in which he received a nasty wound in a sensitive spot, the French, the doctor who delivered him, letters in multiple languages, the parson, the personal history of the midwife, and what curses are appropriate for what occasions.
Most novels are pretty straightforward -- they have a beginning, a middle and an end. But "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" totally ignores that, by having a beginning that lasts for the whole book, dozens of "middles," and no real end (it just stops at a suitable spot). All of this is without a real structure.
And he took this postmodern, break-all-the-rules mentality all the way, by including odd little illustrations -- when speaking of the death of Parson Yorick, Sterne includes a black page. Random empty pages. Asterisks instead of important paragraphs. And a bunch of squiggly lines to demonstrate precisely how the narratives in previous chapters looked.
At first glance, Sterne's writing style was pretty typical of his period -- detailed, somewhat formal in tone, and very talky. It takes a little while for Tristram to start dipping out of of his narrative -- at one point, he starts interrupting himself in midsentence. By the middle of the book, he's completely lost control of his own story.
And he twisted it around with lots of bawdy humor (such as poor Uncle Toby's groin injury, which causes quite a few problems), and the continuous comic stumbles of all the characters. On the subject of his own name, Tristram describes his dad's reaction: "Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which to his ears was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.")
Life is too rich to be encapsulated in a single story -- that's the problem with "Tristram Shandy," whose story is a classic comic delight of premodernist-postmodern skill.
Excellent edition October 22, 2005
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
The vast number of the allusions in 'Tristram Shandy' to all sorts of subjects make it very difficult for a reader to appreciate the novel on its own. Subsequently this edition is invaluable to students &c who want some idea of what Sterne is actually talking about half the time - the notes are excellent and so is Ricks' introduction.
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